Chapter 7. Envision Outcomes: Consider All the Consequences

Having picked several areas in which to focus your efforts, it is time to consider the consequences, or outcomes, of the changes and innovations you are considering. This step will help you refine your problem statement or goal by identifying criteria for measuring progress.

As you think about outcomes, remember that actions may have both positive and negative ramifications that can reverberate beyond the actions' immediate focus. Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory provides a useful framework for thinking through the possibilities (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).He suggests considering the following areas when looking at the impact of a course of action:

• How will it affect the individuals who have to make the changes? How well are they prepared, in terms of prior history, temperament, skills, and specific training?
• How will it affect the small-group contexts in which people work together intensively and regularly and therefore exercise interdependent influence on one another? Examples of what Bronfenbrenner calls “microsystems” include
  • classrooms
  • grade-level faculty
  • subject-area faculty
  • members of “houses” or similar units within schools
  • various classes that students take (including art, physical education, or music)
  • informal times such as lunch, recess, dismissal, and class changes
  • faculty meetings
  • other faculty and home-school groups
  • union representatives
  • special-services staff, guidance, and other pupil-services providers
  • support staff
  • business units
  • administrative teams

Be sure to consider how any option will affect the nature of the interactions within each of these contexts because this will influence the outcome of your new initiative.

• How will it affect the culture and climate of the school as a unit?
• How will it affect relationships with parents, groups and constituencies in the community, state-level education authorities, and other relevant state, regional, and federal bodies?

No doubt, you have found that a change in procedures surrounding discipline, for example, affects students most directly, but also has consequences for staff development, parental concerns, resources, political considerations, and logistics. Bringing in a social-emotional or character curriculum has consequences related to the following:

• Staff experiences with previous curricula.
• Other curricula that may be used in grade levels prior to and after those in which the new program is planned.
• Instructional technologies and how they fit with existing pedagogy and resources.
• The match with what other schools in the district might be doing.
• Relevance to local, state, or national “standards.”
• The nature of training and ongoing coaching and supervision and its cost in terms of time, money, and other resources.

Envisioning outcomes always requires strong consideration of the time and resources needed to reach a state of readiness in any area. Your mentor, CASEL, and the CEP can be invaluable sources of advice because they can share specific experiences and help you think through possibilities.

How and Why to Envision

The use of the word “envision” reflects advances in emotional intelligence theory and hearkens back to the first step in the problem-solving process: focusing on signs of feelings. Looking at outcomes cannot be dispassionate. Here are some key questions for which you will want to solicit genuine answers:

• How will it feel to carry out a particular option, in the short, medium, and long term?
• What can be done to make the experience more positive, better supported, more likely to succeed and favorably viewed?
• How will it feel if you and your school decide notto carry out a particular option in the short, medium, and long term?
• How will you know when and how your efforts are succeeding? What will positive outcomes look like? At all the relevant levels, what indicators will tell how your initiative is doing, how it is affecting the school, and what changes should be made to improve goal attainment?

The subjective calculus for answering these questions requires working in a spirit of improvement, not optimization. Sometimes, problems demand the best action you and your school can take in a given time frame. You do not have the luxury of postponing action until you can explore every option. On the other hand, in certain situations, there is more time available and decision making can proceed in that light. Usually, though, you will be comparing potential courses of action to the status quo in addition to reviewing them on their own merits. As noted earlier, any solution and plan is subject to the action-research process (see Appendix C), which involves ongoing monitoring and adjustments.

Schwahn and Spady (1998) point out that lasting change requires strong, positive mobilization. Therefore, you should ensure that envisioning beneficial outcomes, however small, plays a prominent part in the process you use to consider consequences.

Your task as an administrator is to take the options from the previous chapter and set up a structure that ensures each one is given specific consideration. One way to do this is to use the “options and outcomes” procedure. Actually, this is a fancy title for a variation of the old process of diagramming sentences. For each option you generate, draw lines to allow the listing of possible consequences if it is followed. Some of these lines are labeled so that specific aspects of consequences are reviewed, such as short- and long-term effects; implications for staff, students, and parents; and other considerations mentioned in this chapter, suggested by your mentor, or generated in the course of problem solving and planning in your school.

Figure 7.1 contains a sample of the options and outcomes procedure for one option (“Option A”) to a hypothetical decision. In this example, the decision makers are interested in three areas: long-term outcomes, short-term outcomes, and implications for staff. You would write possible consequences for each of these areas in the branches of the chart. The procedure would be repeated for each possible option.

Figure 7.1. Options and Outcomes.

There are many ways to organize this process to maximize staff involvement, including:

• Assigning staff subgroups to envision outcomes for one or more options.
• Conducting the review process as a committee of the whole.
• Asking different constituent groups to envision outcomes from their unique perspectives.
• Convening interdisciplinary groups to generate outcomes that will incorporate a shared perspective.
• Employing a staging process in which a subgroup conducts an initial screening of a large number of options.

Regardless of the method you choose, you will find it useful to create checklists to help groups organize their work and carry out the diagramming process. How much detail you provide to guide the process is a strategic decision. For example, in some cases, you may wish to provide more general instructions if your intent is to foster greater group creativity in envisioning outcomes.

Transitions: Review and a Look Ahead

Review

• Envisioning the range of consequences—negative and positive, long and short term—associated with your options helps determine which option holds the greatest potential to help you reach your goal.
• Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory suggests interventions in one aspect of programming may have far-reaching ramifications. As you envision outcomes, think of possible outcomes that extend beyond the target of the intervention.
• Though a “perfect” solution is unlikely, solutions should be compared in terms of how it would feel to enact the solution, how it would feel not to, and what may change in the school as a result.
• The options and outcomes procedure, a method of diagramming options and consequences, can be helpful in organizing your envisioning results.

Bridge

By this time, you have set a goal for improving the social and emotional climate and character of your school and have arrived at specific options for achieving this goal. The step emphasized in this chapter, anticipating outcomes for various options, amounts to predicting the future. You need only ask your local weatherman or stockbroker to learn how easy that is. As you anticipate outcomes, stay in close communication with your mentor and review information about how other schools similar to yours set up programs. Their experience with implementing similar options can be instructive in your efforts to predict outcomes in your school.

Your ability to bring various options together in a creative and viable approach is important. No less important, however, is your ability to articulate a vision for the changes you hope to achieve and to keep this vision salient in the eyes of your staff. What's the big picture? Why are you doing all this? These and other questions will call on you to be clear about the specific outcomes you want to achieve. The process of bringing social-emotional initiatives into a school or district is dynamic. Discussing outcomes in a serious way serves to sharpen the vision of where the organization needs to be and can be. It becomes a matter of clarifying your vision and recognizing that, as with any visioning process, lenses do need to be cleaned off and adjusted at times.

The next chapter describes the process of moving toward a particular approach that will become the basis of action planning. Just how smooth that process will be depends on how much you and your staff share a vision and agree that you have fairly considered a range of options.

Reflections for Action

• Observe your feelings and those of your staff as you envision outcomes:
  • Which outcomes seem to generate excitement and enthusiasm?
  • Which outcomes are associated with feelings of frustration or anger?
  • Why are these options generating these emotions?
• Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological theory as a guide, who will be affected by bringing social-emotional and character education programs to your school, and how might people react? Think in terms of individuals, small-group micro systems, the school as a whole, and the broader community.
• What new relationships may be created, or which old relationships changed, by bringing such programs to your school?